Intern Nation

If interning were an Olympic event, Ivellisse Morales would be a gold medalist. Since her freshman year at Boston University, the 21-year-old public relations major has racked up seven internships. During the course of her odyssey, she has done everything from stuffing envelopes and running errands to writing analytical reports, all the while attending classes and working part time at an outside job. This summer, Morales crowned her vita with a plum internship: the communications desk of Teach for America in Manhattan.

Almost forgotten in all this résumé building, though, is the fact that in the thousands of hours Morales has spent working, her efforts have barely made a dent in the $55,000 in student loans that she has accumulated. Only four of the internships were paid, all but one providing no more than $12 an hour; a few granted minimal school credit. But Morales is surprisingly at peace with the way the nonremunerative internship game is played. Would-be employers, she says, "are not going to care how high your grades were. They're going to care what you've done in the past." Nonetheless, upon hearing about an unpaid 40-hr.-a-week summer internship in her field, she winces, admitting, "It's slavery almost. Because they're getting the same amount of work as a full-time employee but for free."

Welcome to Interning 101. Internships, which used to be primarily for medical students, have become ubiquitous in the corporate, nonprofit and government worlds. Some are paid, albeit badly, but nearly half aren't, according to a new report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Only 3% of undergraduates were interns in 1980; it is estimated now that of the 9.5 million students at four-year schools in the U.S., 1 million to 2 million have an internship in any given year, meaning that as many as 75% have had one by graduation. Further bolstered by companies looking to leverage cheap labor in an economic downturn, internships have become "the principal point of entry for young people into the white-collar world," writes investigative journalist Ross Perlin, the author of the compelling Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. With the youth unemployment rate at 17.4%, nearly twice as high as the adult rate, many college students are being driven to take unpaid jobs with the promise of paid employment that never materializes.

Consider the experience of Jordan Jacobson, 22, who graduated in May from the University of Kansas. The graphic-design major, who has five internships under his belt and upwards of $35,000 in student debt, was paid a paltry stipend of $300 a month this summer by a small design agency in New York City. "They told me they usually hire their interns when their internships are over," Jacobson says. But partway through his stint, they blithely waved him away. "I think when they hired me, they knew very well that they wouldn't be able to give me a full-time job. I was working pretty hard for them. I didn't feel very good about it," he admits. "I felt a little used."